Wednesday, May 30, 2012

celebrating a life

GUYS.  
             It has been a while. My apologies. And a special thanks to those who have mentioned my lack of blogging, it feels nice to know people care even a smidge about my ramblings. 

To dive right in, today I went to a memorial service or a celebration of life if you will. A good family friend of ours passed away a few weeks ago. He is/was an amazing man. I mean...I will not be able to do him justice. Everyone called him Bear. He is best friends with my uncle. His family is awesome and we would often get together with them for game night. And honestly those nights happened because I would personally talk to Bear at my uncle's church about getting the 3 fams together :) . Before Bear met the Lord he lived a gnarley life of sin and anger and drugs/steroids and he was in the Vietnam war and he hated his father and all this other crap. But Bear was life and joy and acceptance and comfort. 

Basically, this post is about everything I learned/was reminded of by his memorial service. The service was exactly as he would have liked it. Casual attire, a Gospel choir, people cracking jokes about Bear, and more importantly...sharing about Christ and getting right before God and accepting grace and not living a luke warm life. 
Like most deaths, it reminds you of how fragile our days are, and what a gift each one is. It was a huge reminder to live with an eternal mindset. Who the hell cares about the world and what people think? In the grand scheme of things GOD THE FATHER AND HIS SON ARE WAY MORE IMPORTANT. How selfish are we? I want to live like Bear, he would drop anything for someone in need. He made it his life mission to tell people about how Christ changed him. He went to the marine base every Sunday and spoke to young men about the saving power of God. And you know what? True fact, over 5,000 marines gave their life to Christ through Bear. And it is recorded that 4,000 of them were personally baptized by Bear. But Bear would not dare take the credit. He wasn't like that. 
I will miss him so much, he was so loving towards me, so fun, so crass and ridiculous but so centered on his faith. Lucky him that he is in Heaven kickin back with the Big Guy. He would probably say to me, "Kell, quit crying I'll see ya up here in a second. Keep changing the world for God and don't worry so much about me being gone I've got it made". 

So let's focus on going 100% for the Lord and others, and live with BIG joy and BIG grace like BIG Bear did.